“Oh no, I—” She started to demure, but he’d already pulled
her from the chair, his hands already on her waist.
His familiar scent washed over her and the security of his
strong arms quickly squelched any protest she could muster.
“It will be harder for them now,” he promised.
“Why is that?”
“You’re living with me and I’ll take care of you.”
“Are you going to wait up on the porch with your shotgun?”
she murmured into his shoulder.
“If I have to.”
“Would it be okay if I did the same to you?” she tossed
back, her lips bare inches from the pulse in his neck.
“Sure. Any girl you don’t like is gone,” he said with
conviction.
“I didn’t like Randi.” Anne knew full well her name was
Randa but mispronounced it on purpose, and he didn’t correct her.
“I know. And she’s gone.”
“
She
broke up with
you
.” Anne laughed into the
curve of his shoulder. It was an effort not to rub her cheek against the soft
material of his t-shirt and let her hands wander the broad planes of his back.
“I was getting to it.” His hand traced up her spine in a
casual caress.
Anne realized she wasn’t dancing with him as she would a
friend, but clinging to him as she would a lover—their dance a preview to how
their bodies would work together, all sweat-slicked and needing. Her hands had
splayed over his muscled back and her heartbeat thundered in her ears. She
couldn’t catch her breath and the casual touch of his hand on her back caused
her to imagine all the other places he could be touching her. She was wet for
him again, and all the bliss that brief touch promised.
His breath was warm on her cheek and she wondered what would
happen if she tilted her face up to look at him. Would he thread his strong
fingers through her hair and kiss her? If he did, would it be gentle and sweet
or hard and demanding? Would it be all she’d imagined, or would it be like
kissing a brother?
Anne had kissed him once in seventh grade. It had been one
of those kissing games. Even at twelve, he’d been a knight in shining armor.
He’d been so careful with her, told her they didn’t have to… She wished the
memory was clearer because she’d shoved him on top of the pedestal of her
expectations. Regardless of what happened now, this moment would be replayed
over and over again in her head and she’d remember every indrawn breath, every
stray touch or casual brush of skin while she brought herself off.
The tempo of the music changed. The band’s last set was done
and a DJ was now in control of the sound. A dance beat blared through the
speakers and Anne was bereft. She didn’t want this moment to end.
But Chase didn’t let go.
Yet the moment had changed nonetheless. The sweetness was
gone, but the raw desire remained. Chase moved his body against hers and she
let the thumping beat take over. The music pounded through her and she obeyed
its call—shifting her hips and swaying in time. His hands moved from her back
to her hips, releasing her only to let her spin with the breaks in sound.
She worked herself against him—and heat flooded her cheeks
when she realized he was hard. Startled by his reaction, Anne looked up at his
face and saw pure lust in his eyes.
Hot need coursed through her and made her slit clench and
ache. It was only a dance, but feeling the evidence of his desire and the
reality of him meshed with the fantasy—all of those images came crashing in on
her at once. Of watching him touch himself, of fantasizing about what it would
be like to do those things for him and have them done to her.
The mouth she knew so well curved into his easy smile—she
imagined it wet with the evidence of her desire. The arms that fit around her
so often strained with his efforts, her nails digging into his back while he
drilled into her…
“Sorry.” Although his tone said he was anything but. He
leaned in and whispered against the shell of her ear. “That’s what happens when
a beautiful woman grinds on me. Even if she is my best friend.”
She licked her lips. Damn. Back to the Friend Zone again.
Even though part of her cried that it was the
Beautiful
Friend Zone. It
was just as well. Her earlier convictions reasserted themselves. It was for the
best.
But her mouth refused to cooperate with that train of
thought. “Does that mean you want to stop?” Anne knew her words sounded like
the most blatant of invitations, but her body was on fire. She’d play it off
later if she had to, but she had the idea this thing she felt was like a
freight train quickly running out of track and she couldn’t slow down.
“Do you?” He turned her, pressing against her backside
intimately—as if he wanted her to know the extent to which she affected him.
Rather than answer, she slid down the length of him and back
up again, working her ass against the hard ridge beneath his fly. He grasped
her hips hard to anchor her against him and electric jolts ricocheted through
her, from deep in her belly all the way to her clit. But she wanted more. She
couldn’t get close enough.
Anne turned to face him and looked up into the turbulent storm
in his green eyes. The music continued to throb and pound and it seemed as if
it were pulsing in time with her need. Her body moved almost against her will.
Chase’s hands slipped from her hips and cupped her ass. His
steady gaze never left her face as he eased his knee between her thighs. He
lifted her up on his leg as they danced and his thigh rubbed the seam of her
jeans against her pussy.
At the first stroke, she gritted her teeth against the
intensity of the sensation. She wanted to tell him to stop, she wanted to run
away, but she needed to come more. Anne’s body wanted this, no matter what her
common sense told her.
“Do you like dancing with me, Annie?” He moved again,
shifting his leg between her thighs and pulling her higher. She wrapped her
legs around his hips and he held her there, the hard ridge of his cock where
his leg had been.
“Please,” she begged, unable to answer.
He gripped her ass tighter and increased the pressure on her
slit. Anne gave up all pretense of dancing, or even moving to the music, and
allowed him to move her as he would. She tightened her arms around his neck and
buried her face in his shoulder.
Jolts of desire stole every sensation but that of Chase
thrusting in a mock act of coitus. It was on the tip of her tongue to beg him
to take her home, to strip her bare, but she bit down on her lip and rode the
waves of pleasure he wrought.
“Chase!” His name was torn from her as the mounting tension
crested, and she shuddered as the orgasm took her, more intense than anything
she’d ever felt with her Bullet or Rabbit.
He stilled as she stopped writhing, but she could feel his
heart still pounding against his chest and his need evident in the press of his
body against hers. Chase made no move to find his own release, but let go of
her.
Anne was trapped—she had nowhere to look now but up at him.
She could look or she could run. She wasn’t a coward, so she turned her face up
to his. The music was still thumping, people danced on around them, but the
world had stopped for this moment between them. It hung gravid with
possibility.
Until the heavy beats stopped and melded into something soft
and slow. She leaned against him as if it were the most natural thing in the
world. His erection was still like steel, but he held her softly. There was no
expectation in his touch.
Anne didn’t know if she wanted there to be or not. It would
have been easier if he’d demanded his gratification like a god claiming his
due. She could still pretend they were caught up in the moment, but that wasn’t
the case. The moment had passed.
And then even the soft music stopped. It was over. Time to
pay the piper.
Chase took it from her, like any other task she didn’t want.
He brushed his lips over the top of her head in a gentle dismissal. “Thanks for
the dance, Annie.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Was
that all it had been? A dance? When the sun came up in the morning, would he be
able to forget this? Would she?
Anne nodded. “Yeah, you too. It was fun.”
Fun?
Like the amusement park? Why had she said that?
It had been so much more than that. She knew they’d have to talk about it, but
the window was gone. Seth and Gin were headed their way.
“Somebody’s going to jail.” Gin grinned.
“For what?” Seth asked.
“Alcohol abuse.” She pointed to Chase’s thigh, where Anne
had been riding him like a pony.
She was mortified to see a damp place down the fly of his
jeans. She’d done that with her need and then her release. Anne blushed so hard
she thought her cheeks were going to burst.
“Yeah, I’m a klutz. Can’t hold my beer,” Chase admitted
casually. His face was a mask that betrayed nothing.
Anne wondered if mortification could be a fatal condition.
She almost hoped it was.
“Let me buy you another beer,” Gin offered. “It’s last
call.”
“No thanks, I have to drive. Maybe next time?” Chase didn’t
wait for her to answer, but put his hand on Anne’s back to guide her out the
door.
Shit. Anne had to ride home with him. Hell, she had to
live
with him. She had to look at his handsome face every day and know that they’d
done this together. When she sat next to him on movie night with his arm around
her, Anne would wonder how to get him to touch her again. Their friendship
would never be the same.
She’d screwed things up royally. She should have talked to
him about Dreamed Desire—or no, fuck that. She should have stopped looking.
Stopped imagining him touching her, wanting her.
The night air was by no means cool, but it provided a
welcome relief from the closeness of the interior of The Bottleneck and it felt
good to be out under the stars. She stole a glance at Chase, but he was focused
on crossing the street to get to the truck and not getting pressed like
roadkill.
She knew she had to say something. Anne couldn’t lose him
because they’d gotten carried away during a dance.
“Chase—” Anne began carefully when they’d reached the truck.
“It was just a dance.” He cut her off but his tone was
casual. His actions didn’t match his words. He’d backed her up against the
truck and the only space between them was a single breath. “What’s a little
orgasm between friends?” He twisted her words and threw them back at her.
“I don’t know!” she cried, betraying every fear that lurked
inside her.
“It doesn’t have to be anything. Nothing has to change. It
happened. So what? Do you remember Jennifer Eisler’s party in seventh grade?”
She’d kissed him in the closet for their Seven in Heaven.
Anne had been thinking about that earlier, but the first inexperienced touches
of a boy had nothing to do with the man he’d become. “Yes. I remember.”
“And did it change us?” he whispered.
“No, but we didn’t want it to,” she answered.
“You want us to change?” He sounded surprised.
“I don’t know. God, I can’t think when you’re this close to
me.” She pushed at his shoulders but he didn’t move back.
“It’s a simple question, Annie. What do you want? Be honest
with me,
and
yourself.”
“Honest? Fine. I’ll give you honest. Dreamed Desire. There’s
honest for you.”
Damn, why had she said that? She couldn’t answer the
question so she’d turned it around on him. Anne knew she wasn’t being fair.
He raised a brow and waited for her to continue, but she had
nothing else to say. Chase straightened. “You want me to be ashamed or to
apologize? I won’t. It’s paying for med school and the house where we both lay
our heads at night.”
“Why didn’t you tell me if you’re not ashamed?” she
demanded.
“So we could end up doing this?”
“Stop answering my questions with more questions!”
“Stop asking questions that beget more questions.” His lip
curled in a half grin.
Now they were back in comfortable territory, a place they
were both familiar with—and somehow that was more devastating than any of the
rest of it.
“Chase, you’re my best friend.”
“And that stops because I made you feel good?” Chase
narrowed his eyes at her as if she were a strange sort of bug.
When he put it that way, it didn’t make any sense. He always
did that. She knew what she wanted to say, had a killer argument all laid out
in her head, but as soon as he opened his mouth, he had a way of
oversimplifying that made everything she’d decided obsolete.
But she hadn’t been arguing with him for fifteen years to
lose so easily. “No, making me ‘feel good’ doesn’t mean we won’t be friends
anymore. It’s when you want to make someone else
besides
me feel good,
as you put it.”
“Well, that’s just selfish. You want to keep all the feeling
good to yourself,” he teased.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” He obviously had
none of the same concerns she did. It was just as well, she told herself for
the millionth time. She turned and got in the truck. He stood there for a
moment before going to the driver’s side.
“Annie—” he began.
“Hey, no big deal, right? It was only a dance.”
“It’s a big deal now.” Even though he didn’t say it, she
could still hear the
damn it
hanging on the end of the sentence.
“No, it’s not. I won’t bring it up again. Let’s forget it
happened.” The words felt hollow on her tongue and the lie turned to ash in her
throat.
“If that’s what you want.” He started the truck and pulled
out of the parking lot.
It wasn’t what she wanted. Why did he keep asking what she
wanted? What about him? What did
he
want? Anne wanted to ask him all of
those things but instead of speaking, she rode in silence.